What's the difference between despair and pessimism?

Despair


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To be hopeless; to have no hope; to give up all hope or expectation; -- often with of.
  • (v. t.) To give up as beyond hope or expectation; to despair of.
  • (v. t.) To cause to despair.
  • (n.) Loss of hope; utter hopelessness; complete despondency.
  • (n.) That which is despaired of.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Crushing their dream of denying healthcare to millions of people will put them on that road to despair.
  • (2) It was the ease with which minor debt could slide into a tangle of hunger and despair.
  • (3) The behavioural despair test is a good complement for screening except for drugs having a beta-agonist activity, it appears that this test is dependent on functional relationships between alpha 2 and serotonergic systems.
  • (4) It became his task to use his literary art in an opposite way to Hesse, even though he despaired of what literature might achieve or of the capacity of rich Europeans to change.
  • (5) He has his job to do and he has to do it the way he thinks best.” On Saturday night, in a sign of the growing concern at the top of the party about the affair, one shadow cabinet member told the Observer : “The issue is already echoing back at us on the doorsteps.” At all levels, there was despair that the furore had turned the spotlight on to Labour’s difficulties as a time when the party had hoped to take advantage of the Tories’ second byelection loss at the hands of Ukip.
  • (6) Many have been driven to a suicidal despair that only those devoid of human empathy can fail to understand.
  • (7) In recent weeks a number of suicides apparently linked to financial despair have hit the headlines.
  • (8) "You can get six, seven or eight calls a day, which would add to anyone's despair and depression.
  • (9) Thus in your own words you have said why it was utterly inappropriate for you to use the platform of a Pac hearing in this way.” He suggested that many professionals were “in despair at the lack of understanding and cheap haranguing which characterise your manner” after a series of hearings at which Hodge has led fierce interrogations of senior business figures and others.
  • (10) For Foos, arousal often competed with despair and sadness at what he witnessed.
  • (11) | Hugh Muir Read more Wherever Labour people gather to discuss how to break out of the vice tightening around the party, answers fail amid sighs of utter despair.
  • (12) The presumed interrelation between early rearing conditions and the neurobiological status of the infant that might lead to increased risk for despair is not understood.
  • (13) Erik Erikson used the film character of Dr. Borg from Wild Strawberries to flesh out his life cycle conception of ego integrity versus despair in old age.
  • (14) But the character – compounded of piercing sanity and existential despair, infinite hesitation and impulsive action, self-laceration and observant irony – is so multi-faceted, it is bound to coincide at some point with an actor’s particular gifts.
  • (15) He is an innately optimistic character as well as a clever one, and a man who needs to persuade his party not to despair.
  • (16) The present report deals with the effects of CBZ on two animal models of depression, namely the potentiation of amphetamine-induced anorexia, and the behavioral despair model.
  • (17) That is the secret of his repetitive name (like Nabokov's criminal hero in his novel Despair: Hermann Hermann, a misprint for Mr Man Mr Man).
  • (18) On the one hand, he genuinely sees himself as the great liberator of the poor, the man who wept at Britain’s modern-day penury on Glasgow’s Easterhouse estate; on the other, he is the champion of policies that have driven some of the poorest people in society into despair.
  • (19) Ovariectomy changed the swimming time course and increased the rhythmical index of depression without other serious disturbances of the behavioural "despair" test.
  • (20) I wanted to rediscover my joy in writing, I wanted to leave behind the heaviness and despair of Dead Europe .

Pessimism


Definition:

  • (n.) The opinion or doctrine that everything in nature is ordered for or tends to the worst, or that the world is wholly evil; -- opposed to optimism.
  • (n.) A disposition to take the least hopeful view of things.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Ultimately, the judgments combine to make a particularly peculiar melange: among the plaintiffs there is a mix of economic pessimism and insecure nationalism with a shot of nostalgia for the Deutschmark.
  • (2) Since doctors are generally accepted as experts on health matters, their apparent undue pessimism about cancer prognosis is unfortunate.
  • (3) Behind the broad sweep of pessimism, it is worth thinking about how the "eurozone in crisis" story could eventually improve.
  • (4) Pessimism is my default setting," she told the Daily Telegraph.
  • (5) There has been widespread pessimism, usually without significant data, about the cloth-covered prosthesis, because of concern of cloth wear, hemolysis and other complications.
  • (6) The cognitive theories of depression emphasize the role of pessimism about the future in the etiology and maintenance of depression.
  • (7) Other negative emotions – self-pity, guilt, apathy, pessimism, narcissism – make it a deeply unattractive illness to be around, one that requires unusual levels of understanding and tolerance from family and friends.
  • (8) But Cameron veered from Libya to adoption, from apprenticeships to gay marriage, and on the economy, from optimism to pessimism.
  • (9) Indications of brain damage sustained during infancy are not grounds for pessimism on the part of the psychotherapeut.
  • (10) The pessimism about the psychiatric reform that emerges among some general practitioners seems to have more to do with the slow progress in creating intermediary facilities between hospital and region rather than an a priori opposition to the reform.
  • (11) To the widespread therapeutic pessimism we oppose various psychotherapeutic techniques for the treatment of non-psychotic compulsive phenomenal; for the manifestations occurring in the course of psychotic illnesses, the appropriate psychotropic drugs will be used in the first place, although they are of limited importance in these types of illness which oppose serious difficulties to all methods of treatment.
  • (12) In MAS, more than a few patients revealed a high anxiety level concretely, recognized psychosocial problems with loss of desire for treatment pessimism recording their prognosis, in addition to loss of QOL.
  • (13) One of the patterns of rigidity is an outgrowth of the lifestyle of pessimism, suspicion, self-reliance, self-discipline, determination, and endurance.
  • (14) The findings are discussed with respect to the mechanisms underlying predictive optimism and pessimism and the possible functions and implications of these predictive biases.
  • (15) But I don’t share the pessimism of a younger friend and activist who says: “I can’t see us being back in office this side of 2030.
  • (16) The questionnaire measured various attitudes concerning asthma and was used to identify those respondents reporting high levels of pessimism or stigma in relation to their condition.
  • (17) A kind of ironic pessimism – planning to fail – is a bit of a cliche in contemporary art.
  • (18) Among the 14 explanatory variables in the multivariate logistic analysis, family members' and friends' smoking, the place of residence, strenuousness of leisure-time physical activities, number of friends, rebelliousness, intelligence test score, and general pessimism were most strongly associated with the likelihood of being a current smoker.
  • (19) The climate models are unequivocal in their pessimism for the future.
  • (20) Compared with findings in manic subjects, the dimensional score for Harm Avoidance was elevated in all affective groups, "worry and pessimism" was elevated in mixed-state subjects, "shyness with strangers" was elevated in depressed and nonaffective subjects, and "attachment" was lower in depressed and nonaffective subjects.